The Schizoid Man
I was born at the bottom of a well, and I have been trying to climb out ever since. No, wait a minute: I was sewn together -- a sock monkey -- and all of my adventures have been born out of my desire to become a real monkey. Or: I fell out of the heavens in a chariot of red hot detritus, and crawled out of the burn-hole left in the scorched earth, to be adopted by a kindly but dimwitted farmer couple, childless, who called my name Emmanuel.
To be plainer, I was born in a hospital in California, went to school all of my life until I stopped, and then I kicked around being idle as long as I could. Then I got a job. Along the way I began the first version of what has become this journal, and whether it is an expression of my idleness or my industry, I leave to you, dear reader, to decide.
I haven't had many adventures. At least, not since I stopped drinking so much. Maybe those are more rightly called "misadventures", involving, as they did, lost keys, urine, stop signs that jumped out in the middle of the road, and extensive dental work. Or maybe those kind of things never happened to me, either; maybe I was never much of a drinker, any more than I was a sock puppet. How are you to know, and who's to tell? The dead have buried their own dead, and cut out their tongues besides.
Maybe I was never born, in which case I am probably not telling you these things now. Time is a funny thing, after all; the only part of it that is real is the part that has ceased to exist. In my experience, I have never failed to exist, so maybe I always was.
I think I was right in the first place. I was born at the bottom of a well, and have been trying to climb out ever since.
